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BELGRADE, Oct 3 (AFP) - The international embargo implemented to isolate Serbia has reinforced the control held by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and threatens to provoke a humanitarian disaster, a UN human rights representative said Sunday.
"It is the most terrible thing to continue this blockade. All embargos just help the regimes. They kill the opposition," said Jiri Dienstbier, a UN special rapporteur on human rights who is investigating abuses in Yugoslavia.
"Everybody should understand that Serbia is now the country with the highest number of refugees in Europe, with a destroyed economy and still under different kinds of embargos," Dienstbier, a former Czech foreign minister, pointed out.
"The help to this country is conditioned to the removal of Milosevic. I am trying to explain to everybody that this is the worst policy of all," he told AFP in an interview.
Dienstbier arrived in Belgrade on Friday for an eight-day tour of Yugoslavia. He is now due to head to the southern region of Sandzak and the province of Kosovo.
Before leaving Belgrade, he stressed that the embargo, combined with the onset of winter, would lead to a humanitarian catastrope.
Contributing to the disaster was Serbia's infrastructure, which was damaged in NATO's 11-week bombing campaign, and the influx of Serbs and non-Albanians fleeing Kosovo to escape reprisals by Kosovo Albanians, the Czech highlighted.
"If there is no help, there may be a humanitarian catastrophe in the winter. The international community should engage very quickly in repairing what can be repaired," Dienstbier insisted.
"We cannot just put the people into a corner, to deprive them of any hope, to make them outcasts of the Balkans, because it is playing in the hands not only of Milosevic, but also in the hands of people like Arkan and Seselj and so on."
Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, was the former head of a vicious Serb paramilitary unit while Vojislav Seselj is the ultra-nationalist deputy premier.
Dienstbier also condemned Serbian authorities for violently breaking up anti-government protests.
"Everybody should understand that there is no solution by using these brutal methods," he said, referring to the beatings that anti-riot police meted out to demonstrators during recent protests.
Only negotiations could solve the political crisis which has beset the Yugoslav nation, Dienstbier said.
"A dialogue in the society has to be opened."